Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, February 2025
396 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 36 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 20% of them.
Titles in this thread
Change: percentage points against a year before| # | Title | Posts | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Full Stack EngineerWorks across the browser, the API and the database; the default startup hire.20% · e.g. Stealth Startup | 20% | 78 | +2.6 |
| 2 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.3% · e.g. PlantingSpace | 6.3% | 25 | +1.9 |
| 3 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.6.3% · e.g. FunnelStory | 6.3% | 25 | -1.7 |
| 4 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.4.8% · e.g. SmarterDx | 4.8% | 19 | +0.1 |
| 5 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.4.8% · e.g. | Formance | 4.8% | 19 | +1.0 |
| 6 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.4.5% · e.g. Friendly Captcha | 4.5% | 18 | +2.1 |
| 7 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.4.3% · e.g. Ardent AI | 4.3% | 17 | -2.2 |
| 8 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.4.3% · e.g. Friendly Captcha | 4.3% | 17 | -0.4 |
| 9 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.3.5% · e.g. Norm | 3.5% | 14 | +0.0 |
| 10 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.3.3% · e.g. SmarterDx | 3.3% | 13 | -1.7 |
| 11 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.3.3% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 3.3% | 13 | +1.5 |
| 12 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.3.0% · e.g. SmarterDx | 3.0% | 12 | -0.5 |
| 13 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.0% · e.g. Elicit | 3.0% | 12 | +0.0 |
| 14 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.3% · e.g. Zetier | 2.3% | 9 | +0.5 |
| 15 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.2.3% · e.g. Fullstory | 2.3% | 9 | +1.1 |
| 16 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.2.0% · e.g. Promptfoo | 2.0% | 8 | -0.7 |
| 17 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.8% · e.g. Riffusion | 1.8% | 7 | +0.9 |
| 18 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.1.8% · e.g. Blackshark AI | 1.8% | 7 | -0.9 |
| 19 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.0% · e.g. Promptfoo | 1.0% | 4 | +0.7 |
| 20 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.0% · e.g. Peregrine Technologies | 1.0% | 4 | +0.1 |
| 21 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.1.0% · e.g. Purplefish | 1.0% | 4 | +1.0 |
| 22 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.80% · e.g. ** Trunk Tools | 0.80% | 3 | +0.2 |
| 23 | Forward Deployed EngineerAn engineer who ships software inside a customer's environment, part builder and part consultant; Palantir coined it, AI labs made it common.0.80% · e.g. Fluidstack | 0.80% | 3 | +0.5 |
| 24 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.50% · e.g. APM Help | 0.50% | 2 | -1.0 |
| 25 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.30% · e.g. PlantingSpace | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 26 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.30% · e.g. Cerebras Systems | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 27 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.30% · e.g. Optimal | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 28 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.30% · an example posting | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 29 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. iGenius.ai | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 30 | Legal EngineerA lawyer who builds: turns legal workflows into prompts, evals and product for legal AI tools.0.30% · e.g. Norm | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 31 | AI Deployment EngineerDeploys and tunes an AI product or agent inside a customer's stack; a close cousin of the forward deployed engineer.0.30% · e.g. Medra | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 32 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.30% · e.g. Archie | 0.30% | 1 | -1.2 |
| 33 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.0.30% · e.g. dialo | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 34 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.30% · an example posting | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 35 | Head of DataLeads a company's data team: analytics, data science and data engineering.0.30% · e.g. Scribd | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 36 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.30% · e.g. MadMen AI | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |